Apologies if something like this has been mooted and disaproved of in the past, I think I may have read something similar on these boards previously.

What if BAJR, this website, with its thousands of weekly hits, became a body subscribed to by public members as an alternative to the IFA / Prospect?

It would need a name change to distance it from the BAJR jobs service (which must of course continue!). For example UKArchaeology. With even 500 subscribing members, this body could be a powerful and credible representitive voice of the profession.

I'm aware any sort of consensus on any archaeological issue is an almost impossible dream - as the varied views expressed on these forums show. However, we are pretty much agreed that low pay and uneven and uncertain protection in law for our archaeological resource need to be changed.

I'd happily pay ?5 or ?10 pounds annually to register with an organisation formed to lobby on these two issues. If full membership was restricted to active members of the profession, and those with an interest in British archaeology allowed as assosciate members it could demonstrate both that it represented a sizeable portion of the profession, and public support of our aims.

Well, that's two ideas today - must have been all that mattocking increasing blood flow to the brain or something....

As will be apparent to any regular visitors to this site, I am an enthusiastic supporter of both BAJR and the IFA. I think that they both do very useful and complementary jobs.

However, I don't think the evidence is there to call BAJR 'a representative voice of the profession', and I don't think it needs to be one. I don't know how many actual hits BAJR gets, but in terms of regular contributors, such as myself, we are a small number of self-selected individuals and a vanishingly small proportion of the profession. None of us represent anything other than our own personal views, and where BAJR has what could be called a 'corporate' opinion it is effectively that of David Connolly, not of the overall body of BAJR contributors (whether or not we agree with it). To be 'representative', it would need a large body of members and a democratic mandate for its policy-making and decision-making processes.

I'm not entirely sure of these figures, so don't hit me if I'm wrong; but I believe that the IFA has over 2000 members and that is somewhere between 40% and 50% of all active professional archaeologists in the UK. That still leaves them exposed to frequent criticism (on BAJR) that they are not representative. If BAJR were to try to become a credible alternative to the IFA, it would be competing with the IFA for members. The effect would probably be that neither one could reach or sustain membership levels close to the present number of IFA members. Therefore, instead of one body representing at least a significant minority of the profession, we would have two competing bodies both representing small minorities. Overall, the voice of archaeology would be weakened.

BAJR is an open forum for comment and discussion, mainly coming from the grassroots of the profession. If it were to try to be a representative body, that would involve creating a constitution, officers, committees, etc, and the grassroots influence would probably be reduced.

As things stand, BAJR and the IFA are two different and complementary types of organisation. They may disagree on some things, but they can also find significant areas of agreement and can co-operate with each other. At the same time, BAJR can form a strong focus for lobbying the IFA where they do disagree. All this would be lost if they became competitors.

So - lets have one (fairly) united representative body for archaeologists (the IFA) and one strong forum for grassroots comment and lobbying (BAJR), linked by David Connolly's leadership of BAJR and new status as a MIFA.

Isn't RESCUE already trying to fulfil the role of being a pro-active lobbying group? Perhaps one of the members on here could elucidate. That leaves three existing groups (BAJR, the IFA and RESCUE) already up and running with very different mandates. Son;t reinvent the wheel, make the existing ones work harder.

It is also the RESCUE AGM and open meeting this coming Saturday at the Museum of London.

And don't forget the APAAG report - one key recommendation was that there should be one single body to represent the views of archaeologists rather than the several that currently exist. CBa quite rightly rejected this implicit suggestion that they and the IFA should unite, as the two organisations stand for very different things.

I'm not sure that 500 BAJR subscribers would be a more powerful and representative body than 2000 IFA members.

First ? please don?t confuse hits to a website with the number of people accessing it ? there are an awful lot of robots roaming the data streams of cyberspace? You may achieve a clearer idea on how many people are using the message board by calculating the number of ?reads? to ?replys? remembering the same person my read the same topic several times as well?
Next setting up a new organisation. This seems to get mooted every few years! My first response is to echo 1 man 1 desk?
Off the top of my head the setting up of a new organisation may present some very practical difficulties ?here is a far from exhaustive list:
you would need to organise some open meetings around the country for like minded people to meet and discuss the nature of this organisation.
You would then have to elect a working party to construct a constitution on how the group would work. You would then have to have another meeting in order to inaugurate the new body and officially elect its officers.
Then you would have to have a mechanism to agree a strategy and give a visible democratic mandate to the organisation to pursue that strategy.
Costs so far would include travel and possible living expenses for the officers of the organisation (the UK is a large place), the cost of venues for meetings, advertising, communications and other overheads. It would also be important to have access to reliable legal advice.
Now you will be able to start lobbying various bodies for greater pay. This will involve costs involved in letter writing, attending meetings, reviewing the agreed strategy and implementing any changes required because the world is mot static. To be done effectively this cannot really be a part time post.
In order to give your organisation more clout you need to persuade a lot of people to join you ? in which case you will need support overheads to keep lists of members, who is up to date with their membership fees, communicating through various magazines and web sites perhaps?
You may realise that there are a number of parallel issues the membership wants you to explore in detail ? some of these may be specialist issues so perhaps committees could be formed of volunteers t explore these area and report back to the group as a whole with recommendation based on their researches.
500 people, or 8% of the profession with a ?5000 a year income ?
What will it be spent on?
Newsletter? ? About ?1000
Travel? How many meetings a year how many people in committees? A peak return to London from where I live costs ?100?
Stationary? Printing? Postage?
Venue hire? Website?
If you are not an IFA member why not join the diggers forum for ?5 a year?

BAJR is basically a one person dicttorship.. ie me.... though I take onboard suggestions, comments, etc,etc.... I am also now a MIFA, and I subscribe to RESCUE. we all have 'roles'to play in the world of archaeology... as does the CBA... BAJR can do things quicker because I am a 'dictator' but I hope that BAJR does 'represent a majority view 'in UK and European archaeology.

First and foremost I am an information centre, job and course provider and this section is an open forum. Only by the 4 of us cooperating will we move on... and I am happy to be part of the change rather than trying to take over.

BAJR went from 80 people a month when it started to over 3500 actual visitors (not hits) per day - unique visitors per week are numbered in the 5-8000 range. The IFA has members (the exact total excluding students and other non graded levels comes in at around 30% of working archaeologists - the number drops if you look at RAOs... which is c. 45 while BAJR has 125 companies advertising - and by advertisisng they have to adhere to pay levels and other conditions, including the IFA standards)

BAJR is made up of people though... it would not be successful otherwise.. I would prefer that BAJR was a voice within the IFA but not replace the IFA. IF we feel that we can work together... then we can get somewhere.

Of course I can act and get things done quicker... (such as the WHS trowel) and that is a benefit to the other groups who must go through committees, but I lack the 'weight'that they have in political descisions (though this is changing) we need each other and I intend to work with rather than against this.

Anyway... I spend tooo much time sunning myself! [8D][8D]

Thanks to everyone who makes this forum such a lively place... it offers a service and a platform for views (right or wrong) to be raised and that can only be good... take the IFA section for example.

all the best... and watch out for BAJR II in May with the start of BAJR Worldwide as well!! (hmmmmmm enigmatic or what!)

ps.... the BAJR Stonepages Podcast is now a regular in the top 10 of the science downloads... with an astounding 126,000 listeners a month